City crews work on potholes in March. City officials and business leaders are debating how to create a fair fee for long-term street maintenance.

Corpus Christi Caller-Times

CORPUS CHRISTI - Whatever the city of Corpus Christi charges as a street maintenance fee, it probably won't look exactly like any of the proposals pitched.

After several weeks of outcry, debate and number crunching among some business owners who said the city's fee plan was unfair, the City Council decided Tuesday to move forward with an extensive survey of roughly 8,000 businesses.

But it stopped short of committing to how the survey data will be used.

That job, under a plan announced by Mayor Nelda Martinez, will be left to a task force of four council members she appointed. They will meet publicly and determine how best to use the data to craft a fee, she said. The goal is to have a plan for the council to vote on in eight weeks.

City officials say they need the fee to raise $15 million per year to bring the long-neglected street maintenance budget up to par.

The city previously considered a fee, tacked on to utility bills, that would have charged residents $7 per month and business owners from $4 to $2,200 per month depending on square footage and how much traffic the businesses generated. Businesses would have been divided into 56 categories.

Among the objections: capping the maximum fee meant large businesses might not shoulder enough of the burden, some said. Others said a site such as an independently owned gas station might generate a lot of traffic, but the owner of that small business would be hurt more by the fee than, say, a Stripes convenience store. Still others have objected to a fee, saying it amounts to an unjust tax.

And then there are small but complex details. For example, how do you treat a convenience store with gas pumps versus one without? How do you weigh a place that generates traffic mainly because it is on the way to somewhere else?

The Institute of Transportation Engineers publishes a set of traffic estimates for as many as 172 categories of business, Assistant City Manager Oscar Martinez said.

The Corpus Christi Chamber of Commerce threw its support behind the HDR survey Tuesday, but president and CEO Foster Edwards said it was contingent on the city not limiting businesses to 56 categories. It is only fair to use the range of categories to ensure each business is accurately charged based on the traffic it generates, Edwards said. And he said the data could be useful later for purposes unrelated to the street fee.

The mayor said it would be up to the task force to do the "heavy lifting" — sorting through the complex details to figure out the fairest way to use the survey data.

"We're not going to have a perfect product, but we're going to have an equitable product," she said.

Councilman Mark Scott cautioned that the task force needs precise direction from the council because of the amount of time and energy invested in the issue for more than a year, and the urgency of reaching a resolution.

"I want to be real sensitive that the committee doesn't go out and do something other than what the council directs them to do," he said.

Martinez appointed Rudy Garza as chairman of the task force. Other members are Colleen McIntyre, Chad Magill and David Loeb. The mayor said meeting notices will be posted on the city's website.

The council voted 8-1 to move forward with the $202,500 business survey contract with HDR Engineering Inc., to be completed over 30 days with the help of city staff. The lone dissenter was Councilwoman Priscilla Leal, who consistently has opposed a street fee, largely out of concern for how it might affect poor residents.

The maintenance fee is a fraction of the city's overall street management plan of nearly $1 billion. The fee is designed to correct decades of neglecting regular upkeep, and it will pay to maintain only streets in fair condition or better. More than $900 million in additional funds, paid with bond issues and possibly giving neighborhoods the option to pay fees for their own street repairs, are required to reconstruct or rehabilitate the worst streets, city officials estimate.